War Baby / Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art investigates constructions of mixed heritage Asian American identity in the United States. As an increasingly ethnically ambiguous Asian American generation is coming of age, this multi-platform project (book, traveling art exhibition, website and blog) examines how, or even if, mixed heritage Asian Americans address hybrid identities in their artwork, as well as how perspectives from critical mixed race studies illuminate intersections of racialization, war and imperialism, gender and sexuality, and citizenship and nationality.

Laura Kina, MFA, is associate professor of Art, Media, and Design, a Vincent de Paul Professor, and American Studies, Global Asian Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies affiliated faculty member at DePaul University, Chicago. She is the project director and coeditor and co-curator, along with Wei Ming Dariotis, of War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art.

She is a member of the Diasporic Asian Arts Network and the International Network for Diasporic Asian Art Research and has served on the boards of the MAVIN and the Japanese American Service Committee. Her solo exhibitions include Sugar (2010), A Many-Splendored Thing (2010), Aloha Dreams (2007), Loving (2006), and Hapa Soap Operas (2003). She has exhibited nationally and internationally including at the Chicago Cultural Center and the Spertus Museum (Chicago, IL); the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University (Waltham, MA); India Habitat Centre (New Delhi, India); Nehuru Art Centre (Mumbai, India), and the Okinawa Prefectural Art Museum (Naha, Japan). Her artwork has been published in Modeling Citizenship: Jewish and Asian American Writing; Other Tongues: Mixed-Race Women Speak Out; Embracing Ambiguity: Faces of the Future; and The New Authentics: Artists of the Post-Jewish Generation. She cofounded, with Wei Ming Dariotis and Camilla Fojas, the Critical Mixed Race Studies conference. Kina is a founding and managing editor, along with G. Reginald Daniel, Wei Ming Dariotis, Maria P. P. Root, and Paul Spickard, of the Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies.

Wei Ming Dariotis, PhD, is associate professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University. She is the coeditor and co-curator, along with Laura Kina, of War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art.

She has co-curated exhibits with Kearny Street Workshop and Galeria de la Raza. Dariotis has also served on the boards of Hapa Issues Forum, iPride, and the Asian American Theater Company and on the advisory boards of the Asian American Women Artists Association and Kearny Street Workshop. Her academic publications include “Developing a Kin-Aesthetic: Multiraciality and Kinship in Asian and Native North American Literature,” in Mixed Race Literature (2002); “On Becoming a Bi Bi Grrrl” in Restoried Selves: Autobiographies of Queer Asian American Activists (2004); “‘My race, too, is queer’: queer mixed heritage Chinese Americans fight for marriage equality” in Chinese America: History and Perspectives (2007); “Crossing the Racial Frontier: Star Trek and Mixed Heritage Identities” in The Influence of Star Trek … (2007); “Hapa: The Word of Power,” at the Mixed Heritage Center (2008); “Teaching Edith Eaton,” in Asian American Literatures: Discourses and Pedagogies (Spring 2010); “Mixed Race Kin-Aesthetics in the Age of Obama” and “Obama and Hopes for a Post-Racial U.S.: The Voices of Mothers,” with Grace Yoo in Obama and the Biracial Factor (2012). She is the Special Guest Editor of the 2012 issue of Asian American Literatures: Discourses and Pedagogies, on mixed heritage Asian American literature. She cofounded, with Camilla Fojas and Laura Kina, the Critical Mixed Race Studies conference. Dariotis is a founding and managing editor, along with G. Reginald Daniel, Laura Kina, Maria P. P. Root, and Paul Spickard, of the Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies.